


Inevitability

by enigmaticblue



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-22
Updated: 2011-01-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 23:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/154843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, changing one thing changes nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inevitability

Jimmy can’t help but be grateful for Helen Magnus’ interference, even years later, when he realizes that maybe it hadn’t made much difference.

 

She shows up at his dingy apartment the night before he’s due to bomb the police station, looking cool and collected in her dark pantsuit. He doesn’t know who she is, but he opens the door when she knocks because there’s something about her that has him curious.

 

“Are you Jimmy?” she asks when he opens the door, after he’s shoved the bomb components under his couch where his guest won’t see them.

 

Jimmy hesitates, and then nods. “Yeah. Who’s asking?”

 

“I’m Helen Magnus,” she says, as though that means something to him. “I’ve come to offer you a job.”

 

“I already have a job,” he replies, ready to usher her out the door.

 

Helen shook her head. “You’re involved with people who will exploit your unique talents, and will ask you to do things you’ll always regret.”

 

Jimmy hasn’t gotten to where he is by trusting random strangers who show up on his doorstep. “I don’t think so.”

 

“You’re what we call an abnormal, Jimmy,” Helen says gently. “You have a pouch in your abdomen that will get things past security in most places. You’re the best courier in existence, and yet your current employers want to use you as an assassin.”

 

Jimmy flushes, ready to argue, but he finds he can’t. Helen Magnus is entirely sincere, entirely beautiful, and he’s disarmed by both. He hates himself a little for that. “I can’t just disappear.”

 

“I can ensure that you do,” she replies. “Turn over a new leaf, start a new leaf, and use your gift to help others, rather than to kill.”

 

“You don’t—there’s no way you can protect me,” he protests.

 

“I found you, didn’t I?” she asks. “Trust me. I promise you won’t regret it.”

 

Jimmy does, and Helen never breaks her promise. He never regrets trusting her.

 

~~~~~

 

He can’t say he’s surprised to read about a drive-by shooting a few days later. The man he’d been hired to kill is dead, along with his wife and son. His daughter is the only survivor of the attack, and Jimmy feels a pang as he reads the story.

 

If he’d bombed the police station as planned, Freelander’s wife and son wouldn’t have died—probably. Or maybe they would have been visiting him.

 

Jimmy knows that there would have been police in the building, and their families would have been mourning now, as well. Maybe his defection saved them, maybe it hadn’t, but Jimmy’s made his choice.

 

He likes his job, anyway. He uses his underground connections to help the Sanctuary, to follow up on leads and secure abnormals. He uses his pouch to transport things that would be too dangerous to move any other way, and he trusts Helen to do the right thing.

 

Jimmy doesn’t have the regrets he’d had when he’d been working for his old gang, but he leaves the tattoo to remind himself of how easy it is to cross that line.

 

Years later, when he’s trapped with Kate Freelander, Jimmy gives thanks for Helen having found him when she did. He’s grateful that he can say he had nothing to do with her father’s death, that he can give Kate some small measure of closure. He’s thankful that he doesn’t have to face the consequences of his sins, at least not here, and not now.

 

There’s enough that he has to pay for; he’s grateful that he doesn’t have to pay for this, at least.

 

In the end, there is no choice, no matter how much he’d like to continue living. He leaves the fire elemental with Helen; Jimmy tucks the bomb inside his pouch and walks into the arms of the enemy.

 

But he does so without any regrets.


End file.
